Webmaster General Forum

I find myself stuck with a great site that nobody visits. Guess why? Because I haven't dared to tell anyone! Who would I tell? Submitting it to Digg or Reddit or any of those sites is pointless as only a select fews' articles make it to the front page. The rest are put in the trash flood of spam that nobody ever sees. (Trust me... it works that way.)

So... what should I do? I don't wanna spam, and I don't have any money yet to spend on AdWords. I can't just tell random people about the site, can I? Wouldn't that be spam?

This is highly frustrating.

PS: The site is actually high-quality and is practically ad-free. But I don't know how to get people to use it if they don't even know about it.

there's no magic bullet. you have to submit to directories and search engines and attract links. email similar sites and ask for links. that will land you a few. get your site into DMOZ as well - that is a good first link to have.

the only way of getting instant traffic is to pay for it - use adwords or something like that.

This ls actually not **as** important as you'd think. We abandoned link hunting a few years ago, although we still wish people would link to us, it's certainly not killing the traffic.

Also don't fall for link directories. This can cause you more trouble than it's worth, associate you with "bad neighborhoods."

If your site is rich with content as you say, here it what you do: take a vacation. Forget about it for 3 or 4 months. Spiders will find you and index the content, then up you will come for relevant keywords. Sure you can submit to major engines, but you really don't have to.

I will relate one point and I swear this is 100% true: I recently built this NPO site for someone, while it was being built it had a "coming soon" index page with no links. Launched the site and must have timed it just right - TWO DAYS and it was page one for the major keywords on G, MSN and Yahoo with all top level pages indexed. Two days!

I'm not sure what you are looking to gain by posting here. People are giving advice but you're not willing to take them. Any site of real size or importance has spent a good chunk of change to be promoted.

Don't know if anyone has suggested yet but add a blog straight away. Think about some PR stories, use digg, delicious etc. Think about an RSS feed if you have any kind of news updates associated for your site. This will be easy to do from the blog anyway. Think about writing an ebook to give away free from your site. Once it's available ask specialist blog owners etc to review it for you. Do the basic SEO stuff but don't dwell on it in the early stages. Think quality, value and networking.

If you do all this well, the links will take care of themselves and the search traffic will come eventually but it will just be a bonus.

Hope this helps. It really is what you should be doing and if any of it doesn't make sense let me know and I'll sticky you some good resources. If you really have built a great site then you deserve traffic and the brutal truth is that search engines don't recognise quality sites quickly unless they pick up the buzz through social bookmarking, news sites etc.

Guess why? Because I haven't dared to tell anyone! Who would I tell? Submitting it to Digg or Reddit or any of those sites is pointless as only a select fews' articles make it to the front page. The rest are put in the trash flood of spam that nobody ever sees. (Trust me... it works that way.)

Step 1. Develop a can do, winning attitude.

Step 2. Be nice to people who are trying to help you.

Step 3. Don't have an empty site.

Step 4. Start off going after less competitve key words that don't require hundreds of links in order to rank.

Step 5. Read the posts in the link development library. There are probably hundreds of great ideas in there.

Step 6: Go through the backlinks of the other sites in your niche for ideas.

I was actually wanting to post a question on what decent directory alternatives to Dmoz and Yahoo there are out there... These other ones centime listed like Best of the Web and GoGuides, they are looking for fees in a similar fashion to yahoo, but does anyone know whether these deliver bang for the buck? If you submitted to all of them you're out a few hundred dollars.

Also, does anyone have any more similar Directories that are working submitting to (fee based or free, either way). It would be good if we were able to compile some sort of list in this thread if one hasn't been created already elsewhere.

2. Locate some good long tail keywords (3 words or more) from Google Adwords (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal)

3. Do some basic research on the Internet and then write a nice piece (200-400 words) on this topic. Liberally give out information. Link out to a few good resources (wikipedia, industry leaders, your product pages, your affiliate principals) etc.

4. Keep doing this at whatever rate you can manage.

5. Whenever you post, ping some good places (your blog software should take care of this).

Over a period of time, you will start getting links, visitors and money.

If you have ample time, do this. if you have ample money, outsource a few of these activities.

Step #4 - head to googles webmaster tools page and submit your sitemap. Continue adding an article or two per day and update the sitemap if you don't have software that updates it automaticaly.

Thats it, Google can and will take it from there. Remember that each page is competing against other pages for search terms. You won't rank first for your main topic keyword right away because you simply don't have enough content or backlinks to be an authority on it but you CAN rank top ten for smaller related keywords with some planning.

Those smaller related keywords are where your traffic will start to flow from search engines. The more competitive the topic, the harder the fight. You also mention advertising. Spend time on content, not on advertising, until you get at least some regular traffic. You'll only frustrate yourself more when you earn no money.

mikomido, you left the issue whether the site is "high quality" or "almost empty" unresolved, yet it is key to your problem.

Otherwise, do as others advised you: Add content, give it time, expand the site.

However, I am in a similar situation and comparing a certain project with one I did three years ago, I do have to say that things have become harder in the world of website development. Probably due to competition.

Whereas for Google you have to be patient and wait, Yahoo for example offers express inclusion at a charge; but in some localized yahoo domains there is only a free submission for example in yahoo.it where no payment option is available there is a webmaster panel to add the new url: it.search.yahoo.com/free/submit You might explore localized domains if your website complies as regards content (and in case language) and get in through a backdoor.

Anyway I would not say that 49 USD is too much to be included in yahoo.com database search right away - not that I am a yahoo fan but it is an important actor on the web and will increase your website relevance. From the yahoo.com website: "When you initiate your Search Submit Basic subscription, a nonrefundable annual fee of $49 per URL is charged. This annual fee also includes account setup and a basic quality review of your pages. You can submit a maximum of 5 URLs per domain into the program." (search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html)" This applies to yahoo search, while the inclusion in the Directory is definitely more pricey (299$ per year, recurring)

An Italian proverb says "chi non risica non rosica" that means "who does not take risk will not eat".